Bonfire Beat
by Shinjite Florana
Summary: The spark in her eyes had turned to suns, hardened with determination. There was no question now as she pulled him with her. He was enslaved by her, frame haloed as they approached the bonfire. Each sacred step she took toward the light he shamed by following, but he had no choice. She was captivating.- Inu/Kag drabble, fluff. T for passionate kisses.


**WHAT IS THIS-I DON'T EVEN-WHAT HAPPENED, I BLACKED OUT,**

**This drabble got high jacked by some dream I had ages ago that I've never really been able to let go of. I fell asleep listening to Mumford and Sons, and the bonfire scene happened en dream form. So yeah.**

**This is basically Inu/Kagome fluff. Takes place after her return sometime? Yeah. The music running through my head for the bonfire was basically anything by Mumford and Sons, especially I Will Wait and The Cave.**

**I apologies in advance for the abrupt end. ShinjiteFlorana doesn't know how to end stories.**

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She sung a lot.

He didn't really mind. She was happy when she sung, and her voice wasn't half bad. She had been in her school choir, Kagome would always remind him, whatever that meant. It was "a group that sang," apparently. The only picture he could pull up was a colorful band of traveling minstrels, and the imaginary sight of Kagome in multicolored gypsy clothes made him smirk in amusement.

Sometimes she would sing Japanese songs, in those he could understand most of the lyrics, but just as often she was singing something with sounds completely alien to him. It was the foreign language English, she told him. Apparently she could speak some of the language as well, not just sing it.

He recalled the clank of the wooden broom as it fell to the ground when she had overheard the tall foreigners that passed through the village. She ran up to them beaming and spoke something to the blond of the pair. He was startled, as he should be—no average village woman, even if she was a miko, would know his native tongue.

They talked like that for a while, the blond's shock eventually melting into amusement, admiration even. Inuyasha hadn't liked that, hadn't liked the look that suddenly glinted in the alien's eyes. And he especially hadn't liked that he couldn't understand what they were talking about. She could be bartering him off into indentured servitude for all he knew. She would throw her head back and laugh at some strange sounding comment and he would fume.

But the look the blond kept giving her continued to evolve, and he and his companion kept exchanging glances more and more often. Inuyasha hadn't needed to speak the language to follow where the conversation started heading after that. Kagome's expression changed, she shook her head as she spoke. Her by now nervous smile dissipated as the foreigner's insistence continued.

He could practically hear them.

"There's no need for you to stay here. Come with us. A native like you, such a talented girl, would make an indispensible translator. If how you say you can write and read the language as well is true—your knowledge is lost here. Come with use. Come."

She took a step away still shaking her head. The foreigner's hand reached out and grabbed her wrist.

And that was his cue.

Abandoning his leaning pose in the shade of a tree, Inuyasha had torn the man from Kagome, giving a very universal growl that he thought communicated nicely that the blond man didn't. Touch. What wasn't. His.

But that had been another matter. What was going on now was singing—Kagome singing.

It was always very strange music. It defiantly was foreign, for he had never heard any sort of composition of beat and voice that was anything like what she produced. Not that he was any aficionado, but the way she moved with the music—tapping beats against walls and floors, her feet prancing in an ill thought-out dance, head bobbing, hips swaying—and the expressions she would wear as the lyrics pulled from her lungs—wild and crazed in one song, then wrenching and passionate in another—made him think the ballads were much more complex that the other sounds that had ever graced his ears before he heard her sing.

He liked it, actually. Liked to watch her body move, her voice pull the air, her eyes shut as she lost herself in the tune. It was in those moments when he wished he could somehow join her, somehow become part of that little world she lost herself to.

He couldn't sing of course—freaking Kami, no. And there was no way in hell you'd catch him dancing. She had tried that before, too. When those REAL traveling mistrals had passed through the village.

Kagome had played host to the band and as tradition dictated they repaid their food and shelter with a display of their talents. The night they stayed became an unofficial festival and the massive bonfire burned late into the morning. The smoke had sent dark tendrils into the star-riddled sky, Kagome's form a flickering silhouette against the roaring flame.

Many had been up and moving about the fire, but Kagome stood out. Her movements were wild. She was captivating and the more he watched her twist and turn the more the rest of the world fell like static into the background. Feet stomped, voices raised and raucous, hands clapped and the village pulsed with life. Kagome absolutely glowed. Her hair fell wildly about her face as she jostled, sweat from the heat of the fire and her constant gyration created a glistening sheen on her brow and her cheeks were flushed bright pink. Her face was euphoric with celebration.

She had been spinning around a young village girl about the burning beacon. She smiled down at the child only be outmatched by the beaming she received in return. Even at a distance he was able to taste the bright citrus of the youths laugh joining Kagome's in uplift. The noise stirred something in his chest. His deep gaze dilated at the sensation.

The girl left eventually. Kagome had been dancing alone for a while then. There was no way around the fact that she was the frivolity's catalyst, the celebration's source and summit. Dancing up to the thundering band she clapped to the beat in further encouragement. The members called and shouted in support. The drum beat louder, the flute soared higher, voices belted breathlessly. The snakeskin banjo danced zealously, the ichigenkin thrumming thrilling beats to the deep hum of the xun. Their expressions showed who their muse was for that performance.

It was after that she caught his gaze. He was detached from the sweltering movement. He had abandoned his lounge on the bough of the particular tree he had adopted that evening, instead leaning against its trunk, entranced by the priestess's movements in front of him. He had assumed no one could see him at this distance from the group even if they did happen to look his way. Apparently he had been wrong as the feverish girl began to stride toward him.

He had stood up properly as she approached, pushing away from the tree. He knew the wild look that would spark in her eyes, but at her close proximity the color of insanity that filled them made heat prickle across his body anyway. Her smile burned along with the flaming light flickering in swift kisses along her red cheeks. He didn't remember the words she used to seduce him to join her, just the feeling of blazing coals bleeding through his chest as he looked into her face and watched the blood-red blush of her lips move with the alluring sounds. His sight was held captive by her.

She grabbed his wrist, her fingers unnaturally cold against his own burning pulse. She stepped back, tugging at him to come with. He allowed his arm to extend but didn't move. Her body was black against the glow of the flame she was trying to drag him towards, striped by the light burning through the fabric draping her frame, loose and tussled from her dancing.

"_Join me."_

No, that bright place was not for him. _Go back Kagome. I can't join you but I can still keep you in my sight._ He did not speak, nor could he bring himself to pull his hand from hers.

Kagome's smile turned a little sad, and Inuyasha felt her fingers begin to unwrap from him as she turned away to face the light again.

Something lurched in him, and he jolted forward to grab her wrist, reversing their positions. She turned back, eyes bright and Inuyasha pulled her to him, back under the tree to capture her burning lips in a passion that made her legs buckle. He caught her to himself, but did not shorten his possession of her mouth until he was satisfied and she was left gasping.

When she regained the strength to stand on her own, her eyes had solidified the spark in them. The spark had turned to suns, hardened with determination. There was no question now as she pulled him with her. He was enslaved by her, frame haloed as they approached the bonfire. Each sacred step she took toward the light he shamed by following until he had been dragged into the spectator ring encircling the giant bonfire.

Here he stopped. All the fire that blazed about her and within her could not bring him into the spinning inner circle of moving celebrants with her. He simply couldn't. He wasn't meant or made to. She would have to dance alone.

Her heart wasn't broken by this, but despite her dawning understanding, Kagome's eyes remained pleading.

Inuyasha moved their joined hands then. In front of the entire village in flashing firelight, as music soared into the skies like the smoke that joined it, the crackle of the charring wood in time to the thumping, stomping, clapping heartbeat of the moment, he pressed the back of her hand against his lips. His eyes closed for a moment at the feel of her chill hand, slightly clammy with sweat, pressed against his feverish mouth. He opened his eyes to watch the electric volt of his touch shoot up her hand and into her chest, her breath sharp—but it just lasted a moment—then he released her.

As if commanded, the moment his hand released hers she twirled away from him and joined the pulse of the moving circle, her body twisting in fervent abandon, her smile broad enough to encompass the whole world. Even when she moved in the encircling fervor to the side opposite him, Inuyasha's gaze still caught her form through the arching tongues of flame. They licked at her picture, her arms flung wildly about her head as she danced. Occasionally her palms would beat together in time to the music, and other times she'd sing loudly in chorus with the rest of the throng. Other times her eyes shut, lost in the sounds. At all times she was moving, at all times her body soaked in the light, glory peeling off her in beads of glistening sweat—and when she had finally revolved around the bonfire enough to make Inuyasha's head spin, she fell into his arms panting. And damn the audience again if he didn't kiss her.

Again he was unable to hold back and his hand tangled into her hair, bending her neck back as he dominated her in his passion and her exhaust. His other arm crushed her to him, his nails painful pleasure against her waist. Drained from her ardent celebrating, Kagome's legs bucked again, forcing him to support her weight. Unable to hold out any longer, she pulled away from his kiss gasping, her need for air to strong to resist.

Inuyasha had lost himself in her. Forced to cut his possession of her lips short this time, he instead opened his mouth wide, pulling his lips back and dragged his fangs sharp and deliberate from the edge of her jaw down her neck. Kagome's voice caught. Her hands found support in tight fists against his head, mussing his hair, not that he cared at the moment. His ministrations had left angry red lines, but didn't break the skin. He was left pressed tightly against her collarbone. He shivered with exertion, resisting the urge to plunge his canines into her tempting neck.

But he couldn't. Not here. He'd gone too far as it was.

He had retreated with her then, but the "damage", if you could call it that, had been done. Many of the villagers hadn't seen the very public attention he had given Kagome. Others had, but didn't mind. Many others simply didn't feel it was their business what the Miko and her hanyō did. But there were a few that would gossip in hushed tones of the shrine priestess falling prey to a demon. He had been careless.

He couldn't let himself be lost like that again. Kagome had charmed him beyond his own control back then, and he had to be careful to not let it happen again, even if that meant giving up the sight of her dancing again. Instead he had to satisfy himself with the sound of Kagome's clear voice and simple movements. But as he stood there in a bored lean as he watch the girl twirl with the broom around the porch he wondered if he could.

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**Maybe I'll fix the end later. But probs nawt.**

**So I used English equivalents for most of the instruments, something I generally loathe, but I felt throwing all these foreign terms at you would do no good, but here they are anywho. Ōtsuzumi**** (drum), ****ichigenkin**** (single string), Sanshin (banjo), ****Hotchiku**** (flute), Xun (ocarina).**

**Yeeeeeaaahhh, historical accuracy(?)!**

**Please REVEIW! ^o^**


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